


The Things We Forget

by ckret2



Series: TFSpeedwriting Prompts [5]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Ensemble Cast, Gen, Info Creep, Light Angst, Speculation, characters above listed in rough order of prominence, plus other characters but uhhh they're less important
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 14:58:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17164115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ckret2/pseuds/ckret2
Summary: (Spoilers through LL 23.) Information creep is an unnatural mnemosurgical plague, a curse placed on all born on Cybertron. It stands to reason that mechs who are not BORN, but BUILT, might just be exempt. An exploration of the implications, and the interrelations between those who remember everything, and those who only think they do.





	The Things We Forget

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas I'm crossposting all my fics from tumblr to ao3.
> 
> I wrote this the week after LL 23 came out but never got it proofed so eventually went “screw it” and posted it anyway. Pretend the typos are stylistic info creep. It’s thematic I swear. Also I have no idea how to list characters anymore now that AO3 thinks you need to list All The Characters.

**Intro - Never Forget**

* * *

The vamparc ribbon. A dozen different forgotten prisons made by a motorcycle turned spider. A giant statue heralding an alien god. A crew of Autobots rescued using only the memory of where they last were and a calculated trajectory of where they might soon be. The  _Peaceful Resolution_ , reborn with a more vicious name.

Somebody asks Prowl,  _how do you keep track of all these things? How do you always remember all the hundreds of parts you’ve got in play?_

And Prowl answers, “That’s the thing. I never forget anything.”

* * *

Four fallen warriors, battered and dented, nameless. A massive crater, carved into the ground by something from the sky, burned clean as though by a pious light. A gap in the sky where a moon used to be. One warrior in the middle of the pool, the golden-red of sunset, glasses askew, staring at his hands in horror. Mercury starts to leak into the crater, forming a shallow pool, and he sinks into it.

In a panicked, wheezing whisper, he says to himself, over and over, “I’ve forgotten something. I’ve forgotten something. I’ve forgotten something important. Who– Who– Who…”

The shallow pools are declared a holy site, a pious site. Those who find the amnesiac warrior say he must have been born in them. He’s given a name.

* * *

**Part I - Tyrest & Rung**

* * *

There are five watchtowers guarding the small village and its energon mine under a hill—designed by Tyrest, of course, along with the trebuchets to guard it and the machines to help make mining easier and refining faster. Almost everything in the town is designed by Tyrest. It’s why so many people joined him here, despite his not being a Prime.

Everyone gets a shift on the watchtowers, keeping a lookout for stray marauders or Primal armies that might want to steal their fuel or conquer their bountiful town. Even Tyrest himself gets shifts. Right now, though, he isn’t looking out at the plains like he’s supposed to be. He’s looking at his town, frowning to himself.

“There’s… there’s something wrong with them, isn’t there?”

Rung—sitting at the top of the tower staircase, whittling a small copy of one of Tyrest’s trebuchets out of a brick of copper—looks up at him, quietly. He’s very quiet, a good listener. Most people don’t even notice him when Tyrest doesn’t point him out.

Tyrest gestures out at the people milling far below them—but then continues the sweeping gesture, taking in the plains as well, all of Cybertron. “The people are missing something.  _We’re_  missing something. I can feel it.” He rubs his forehead, right at the base of his crown, like something is wrong underneath it but he can’t work out what. Rung wonders if he knows how often he does this. He wonders what it is he feels in his head that’s off.

“Something in their minds,” Tyrest goes on. “I just… I just don’t know  _what_.”

If anybody would be qualified to know, it would be him. Tyrest lives inside his mind; he knows his own head better than anyone else knows theirs. If he feels something is off in it, he’s right.

… And, truth be told, Tyrest is not the only one to feel it. “… I’m not sure what, either, but…” Rung sets the half-finished trebuchet in his lap. “I think you’re right.” He has more things missing in his mind than most—his earliest days are a blur, compared to most people’s memories—but sometimes he sees someone else trying to remember something, and finding they  _can’t_. And the look on their face is the way that he often feels. They’re all missing something.

Tyrest says, “I think… we can improve on it. I think we can give them what they’re missing.” Rung almost scoffs. Tyrest is always looking to give people what they’re missing. “Or, if we can’t give it to  _them_ … maybe we can make other people, who have what the others are missing.”

“ _Make_  people?” This time Rung does scoff, but not unkindly. “And what do you mean, ‘we’? I don’t know what I can do. I don’t even have any useful skills.” He holds up the semi-trebuchet. “Unless you count this. Do you want me to sculpt their bodies?”

Tyrest doesn’t even laugh. He’s serious about this. “I’m sure you can contribute something to new lives. I—I feel it. I don’t know  _what_ , but…”

“Hm.” Rung turns back to his sculpture. And, slowly, starts whittling again. He’s thinking about those looks people get on their faces when they can’t remember something. Something important. “I could… look into their minds, maybe. Try to figure out what they’re missing…”

* * *

Nova Prime’s optics are curved in the suggestion of a smile, but nothing else in his body language supports the suggestion. “I’m glad you’re both so eager to help with this project.” He gestures for Tyrest and Rung to come into his drawing room. They come in, glancing around subtly, trying not to look like they’re gawking. Despite the assumptions that people make based on Tyrest’s naturally grand physique, he’s never been a mech of great political authority, and neither he nor Rung has ever been in a room this large in a building that only one person owns. So this is how Primes live. “This isn’t your usual field, Tyrest.”

“All fields are my fields.” His voice is just as clipped and professional as Nova’s.

Nova chuckles lightly. “Yes, of course. A true jack of all trades.” He takes a seat on one couch, in front of a low table with a tray of drinks set out. Tyrest sits across from him. “I’m just not used to seeing you in a lab instead of a symposium. And you—Rung, isn’t it?”

Rather than sitting, Rung started circling around the edge of the room, examining the statues set on shelves against the wall. He turns to look at Nova. “Yes, sir.”

“One of Tyrest’s associates, aren’t you? A fellow philosopher?” Rung nods to each question, but Nova goes on, voice booming over any attempts Rung might have made to elaborate. “Lucky that you can make photonic crystals and you just happened to know the one person on the planet who knows what to do with them. As though Primus had a hand in the arrangement.”

“Perhaps he did,” Tyrest says. “This has been my dream for, as—as long as I can remember.  To help create life, a more perfect Cybertronian race. Crafted to be free of our flaws.”

Nova nods approvingly. “A noble goal. What about you, Rung? You have no concerns about playing Primus?”

Rung knows well that Nova is a devout mech—or at least plays one on TV—but also knows that he deeply supports this project. He’s not sure what answer Nova is hoping for. “Not to be impious, but… the thought doesn’t really bother me, no.”

Nova nods again, and it looks approving enough that Rung figures he passed. “Tyrest tells me you’re developing some interesting philosophies on how the psyche functions?”

Rung takes a seat next to Tyrest's—not on the same couch, but nearby. The rules of social acceptability have shifted, with the consolidation of power under a single Prime. Close friendships—the kind that let you touch, the kind that let you even sit on the same couch—are considered… quaint. Provincial. And they don’t want to look provincial in front of the most powerful mech on the planet. “Yes, I am. My fellow philosophers interested in the mind call the subject psych-ology.”

“An apt neologism,” Nova says. “A fascinating thought—studying the mind through  _philosophy_. I’d think that the study of the mind would be work better suited to mnemosurgeons than to philosophers.”

Quickly—more quickly than he means to—Rung says, “Oh, I respectfully disagree, sir.”

Something about his quickness must have intrigued Nova. He leans forward slightly. “So, you don’t work with any…?”

“No,” Rung says, firmly.

Tyrest picks up a drink. “Neither one of us are fond of mnemosurgeons.”

* * *

Tyrest stares out the window, looking down at the soldiers crisscrossing the courtyard below. “There’s… there’s something wrong with them, isn’t there?” He gestures down. “The knock offs. I think they were built… different, from us. They’re missing something. Maybe something in their sparks.”

Rung follows his gaze out the window. “What do you think they’re missing?”

“I’m not sure.” He leans forward, one hand supporting him on the windowsill, the other reaching up to rub at the base of his crown. “But there’s something… fundamentally different about them from us, isn’t there? Something…”

Rung waits patiently for him to elaborate. He doesn’t. “I see.” Quietly, he asks, “And how long have you felt this way?”

Tyrest straightens up, glances back at Rung as though he’s thinking—as though he  _wants_  to say something—but still, he remains silent. Rung waits a little longer than last time. Nothing.

Rung glances at the clock on his desk, then back at Tyrest, smiling politely. “Well, I’m afraid that’s something to think about for your next session. We’re out of time.”

A pause, and then Tyrest nods. “I’ll see if my schedule will allow another appointment.” He walks back over to Rung’s desk, and holds out a hand. “Thank you for getting me in on such short notice. It was good to meet you, doctor.”

Rung stands, and takes his hand. “And an honor to meet you, sir.”

* * *

**Part II - Forgotten Who You Are**

* * *

Tyrest watches silently, as the audience to Repugnus’s trial dissolves into anarchy. Screaming, booing—somebody throws something at him. Aequitas uncovered that Repugnus had been up to far more and far worse than his initial charges ever suggested.

The holes he’s drilled in his back, hidden by his cape, hurt. His head throbs, like he’s holding too much inside of it. And yet for all he’s holding in his head, he can’t find some things.

Like why he ever agreed to help make these… these  _people_ , who are now on trial. He can’t remember what he was thinking. He can hardly even remember who he  _was_  when he helped with this… mistake.

He turns to look at the other three mechs watching over the trial—those who helped him organize it. Xaaron, Nightbeat, Prowl. Xaaron’s optics are so bright, he looks as though he’s on the verge of tears. Nightbeat’s composed himself into the picture of polite intrigue, one arm crossed his body to support his opposite elbow, the other hand covering his mouth thoughtfully; but Tyrest sees how tightly his arms are squeezed against his torso, and occasionally he glimpses how painfully Nightbeat’s biting his lip behind his hand. Prowl, gazing straight at Repugnus, is the very picture of unadulterated rage and loathing.

A recess is called. The courtroom is slowly cleared out. The four of them remain, processing what they just saw. Nightbeat slowly leans forward, presses his head to the barrier in front of their seats, and lets out the single longest sigh Tyrest has ever heard in his life. Xaaron tries to pat Nightbeat’s back, but he swats him away.

For a moment, in the wake of Repugnus’s trial—no,  _all_  their trials—Tyrest is lost. And he doesn’t know if he’s looking for somebody who can help him find his way back or somebody who’s just as lost as him, but quietly, he says to the other three mechs, “Do you ever feel like you’ve… forgotten who you are?”

Xaaron gives him a look that matches the loss he feels. And Tyrest doesn’t know whether or not he’s glad that Xaaron understands.

Nightbeat, however, gives him a look of complete confusion. As though he has never had to wonder who he is, once, in his entire life.

And Prowl answers for them both, with the voice of someone who has never doubted himself for a second: “No.”

* * *

Tarn tries to ignore it when Kaon plays with the Pet.

It’s so easy to forget that he had a name, once upon a time. Most of them  _have_ forgotten. Vos—Vos the latest—never knew him as a person at all, of course. Tesarus likes to play fetch with him, although more often than not the Pet never brings back what’s been thrown for him. Helex occasionally calls him a dumb mutt, especially when he jumps up to try to gnaw at Helex’s lower arms.

 _He always did like you least_ , Kaon will sometimes say—and that worries Tarn.

When he thinks he’s alone, sometimes Kaon will still call the Pet “Vos"—and that worries Tarn, too.

Not just because it means that Kaon still looks at this animal, this shell of a faithless deceiver, as a person—but because it reminds Tarn that he  _was_ a person. A person that Tarn ordered mutilated and mangled, a person that Tarn trapped in a body designed to visually rob him of his status as a person, a body designed to make him lesser.

And when Tarn thinks about that, it makes old scars on his wrists and neck hurt, and it makes him rub his tongue against the inside of his teeth, and it makes him hyper-cognizant of his binocular vision.

And it makes him call up old, faded memories. It makes him remember when he was half his height and bright orange, and he tracked down Megatron to say  _what was done to me—what was done to my teacher and protector, just for not falling in line with an ideology he didn’t believe in—I’m willing to fight to make sure it never happens to anyone else ever again_.

And now he’s the one doing it, isn’t he? And now he’s the one who tried to whisper his teacher and protector to death, just for not falling in line with an ideology he didn’t believe in.

He tries to call up his old name—his real name—and it feels less familiar to him than the name he borrowed from a city. Even his nickname is losing its sting. He wonders, uncomfortably, if it’s possible to forget your real name.

He wonders what else it’s possible to forget.

Kaon is playing with the Pet right now. Play-wrestling on the floor. It reminds him too much of when Kaon and the last Vos used to spar. Kaon never used to win. Now he always wins.

Does he care? Does he feel the dissonance between his old name and his new one? Has his true name started to fade, too?

"Do you ever feel like you’ve… forgotten who you are?”

At the sound of his voice, both Kaon and the Pet stop wrestling, and turn to face Tarn. For a moment they’re both silent.

Then Kaon—whom Tarn has never known to be anything but the cheerful, unassuming sadist that he is today—says, “No.”

* * *

Starscream isn’t speaking to Megatron.

 _No great loss,_  Megatron tells himself, even though he doesn’t mean it and knows it. True, usually when Starscream is this outraged about something, he’ll give everyone in a two mile radius a splitting headache before he’s done complaining—and even if Megatron himself is usually subject to only a fraction of Starscream’s usual wrath, Megatron still can’t say that he misses the shouting. But he does miss the… insights, that Starscream’s tirades can sometimes lead to.

He doesn’t think he needs it today, though. As Astrotrain pulls away from the battlefield, and Megatron gets a view of it from above—charred, pocked, tiny enemy outpost completely annihilated, foes slaughtered and no signs of life left behind—he knows why Starscream isn’t speaking to him.

This was supposed to be a rescue mission.

Megatron is the reason why no one was rescued.

He’d like to say it was Impactor’s fault. Him and his “ _Wreckers._ ” But Megatron knows full well that all Impactor did was  _exist_  between Megatron and their goal of seventeen imprisoned soldiers. Impactor’s not the one who commanded the Decepticons to destroy everything, yes everything; because maybe they can’t get through the Wreckers, but if the Decepticons can’t have their prisoners back, then the Wreckers can’t have them either.

And now Starscream isn’t speaking to Megatron.

Can Megatron blame him? Even he is… thrown off, by his behavior. And he doesn’t think he would be thrown off—except for the fact that Impactor was there.

Impactor used to be Megatron’s best friend.

But today, when Megatron fought him—today, Megatron just hated him. When did that happen? When did he become so eager to kill the person who used to be his best friend?

It isn’t that Megatron feels… betrayed by Impactor. It isn’t that he hates the person he’d once embraced as his friend. It’s that… it’s that he  _can’t see_  him as the person who used to be his friend. It’s like it never happened. Megatron knows it  _did_  happen, but Impactor feels like a stranger now.

Why? What has he lost? Was it—taken away from him? No—when his mind was opened up, those files were never touched. It’s like a carving that’s faded under time and weather until the features are indistinguishable. His friendship has been eroded. And now it’s as though it never existed.

What else has he lost? What other relationships? What of the passions that drove him—even the ones that drove him into this war? His motives for starting the war are older than his friendship with Impactor. Have they remained the same? Or have they become warped, too; eroded with the years?

At the start of the war—when he was writing  _Towards Peace_ —would he have sacrificed seventeen soldiers, waiting on him for rescue, just to spite an instrument of the enemy, someone deluded and trapped in a system that harmed its instruments as much as it harmed its opponents?

Megatron glances at Starscream. Starscream is glaring out a window, one balled fist on the window frame, the other on his hip, watching as the battlefield pulls away. He’s become much angrier than he was when Megatron met him.

“Do you ever feel like you’ve… forgotten who you are?”

Starscream doesn’t even look at Megatron. He just pulls his fist back from the window frame, and thunks it against it dully. “No.”

* * *

**Part III - Long-Term Memory**

* * *

High Command watches as Prowl stalks across the floor, interrupting again. He doesn’t like Optimus’s plan. Of course he doesn’t.

“You can’t be this stupid!” He waves a hand furiously over the 3D projected battlefield map. “The last time you did something like—”

Tiredly, Optimus snaps, “And how long ago  _was_  that, Prowl?”

Prowl stops dumb, mouth half open; as though he can’t recall the last time he was actually asked to contribute something, even this small. Most of his anger is immediately assuaged. (He apparently doesn’t realize it’s a rhetorical question.) “How close a parallel do you want?” he asks. “Because I can think of examples forty-eight years ago, three thousand and nine years ago, eleven thousand six hundred and twenty-five years ago—”

Optimus pounds the projector table, shaking the battlefield map with static. Prowl starts. “Have you kept a  _list?!_ ”

Prowl’s anger is back: “No, I’ve  _remembered!_ ”

High Command doesn’t believe him. Nobody remembers like that—that neatly, that completely—unless they made a point of it.

Optimus points an accusatory finger at Prowl. “How is it that you can never let anything go?!”

And Prowl, half Optimus’s mass but not the least deterred by it, points straight back. “Why don’t  _you_  have any long-term memory?!”

High Command watches. They can’t remember the last time any of them agreed with Prowl. Maybe that’s why Optimus keeps him around—to disagree. They can’t remember what else he saw in him.

* * *

Skywarp’s head slowly swings back and forth as he watches Starscream pace in agitation. Thundercracker has given up on watching, instead staring at the ceiling.

Thundercracker sighs in frustration. “Why do you still care? It was millennia ago, Starscream.”

Starscream stops pacing a moment, to give Thundercracker a nearly betrayed look that Thundercracker doesn’t see. “That—that doesn’t mean it’s  _gone_! That doesn’t mean it never happened!”

“Yeah, sure,” Thundercracker snaps, “but you’re getting along with Megatron  _now_ , aren’t you?” Starscream’s scowl deepens, but he can’t contradict the assertion. “So, why—” Thundercracker gestured around them, almost smacking Skywarp in the arm, “why are we talking about this? Why are you still dwelling on it?”

“Because it—it—” Starscream lets out a frustrated growl, and makes a gesture like he wants to strangle the other two. Skywarp tiredly blinks back. “It’s still  _real_! It still happened to me! It still affects me!”

Thundercracker finally looks down. “So grow a spinal strut,” he growls, “and don’t  _let_  it affect you.” This time, Thundercracker sees the look Starscream gives him, and gestures aggressively at him. “Like  _that_.”

Starscream jerks his gaze away; and in a moment, the only expression on his face is anger.

“Yeah,” Skywarp says, “how come you can never let anything go?”

Starscream grabs Skywarp over the cockpit, and Skywarp’s optics shoot wide open.

“How come  _you_  don’t have any long-term memories?!”

Thundercracker grabs Starscream’s hand, and Starscream lets go of Skywarp, shoving him into Thundercracker. He’s stalked away before they right themselves.

Starscream will remember this the next time he thinks about opening up to anyone.

* * *

**Part IV - Sharp As A Tack / Mental Age**

* * *

“I must say—you have an excellent memory. I can’t see any signs of eidetic decay,” Chromedome tells Overlord. But then says, smugly, “Tell a lie—” he points up into the coliseum audience, “most of the crowd are the same color. And look: every third or fourth person is missing their face. All signs of memory fatigue. Age-wise, I’d say that level of imperfect recall puts you at about 4.2 million years old—give or take a century.”

* * *

“Your memories are so good, I can’t even date you, Nightbeat,” Chromedome says, as he looks at the massive audience of Autobots assembled to hear a speech from Optimus. “Like I suspected, you don’t register facial expression data—these are the blandest looking faces I’ve ever seen—”

Nightbeat groans in disappointment. That’s what he initially came to Chromedome about; he had begun to suspect that he had a hard time reading faces, and he was concerned that it would negatively impact his investigative skills.

“But—here’s the good news—aside from that? Your memories are flawless. With recall this pristine, you’ve got to be—what? Under ten thousand years old? MTO, right?”

“HA! No.” Whenever Nightbeat laughed, it sounded like he was doing it for the effect. “Try five million.”

Chromedome stares at him, and the audience around them pauses mid-applause as Chromedome loses focus on the playback. “You’re kidding. Your mind is impeccable.”

“Thank you!” Nightbeat beams. “This is a 'thank you’ situation, right?”

“It’s not a compliment,” Chromedome says impatiently, “it’s a—a statement of disbelief and bafflement. Are you sure?”

“Uh, Yeah. I remember getting a day off to watch the first Ark launch.” A second image starts to superimpose itself over the current one, sunny skies and another crowd and the golden Ark in the distance. “Wanna watch?”

“No, I believe you.” The scene of the Ark faded. “It’s just… you have no info creep at all. It’s uncanny.”

Nightbeat beams again, chest puffing out. “Well, that’s why I’m a detective, isn’t it? I’ve got an uncanny mind. I’ve never missed a detail. Sharp as a tack.”

* * *

“That’s what I like about Prowl,” Sentinel tells Broadside, “even as much as he tries to slow me down.”

The living road bump in question is on the other side of the room, apparently berating Bumper. It could be for anything from shooting into a crowd to neglecting to file a report, Sentinel can’t tell at all from Prowl’s demeanor. “The good makes up for his soft attitude,” Sentinel goes on. “He doesn’t disregard the fine details or overlook little steps. He’s meticulous, by his very nature. He remembers everything.”

Prowl’s pointing at Bumper’s desk, and when Bumper looks desperately at the door, Prowl only points more insistently. Probably the paperwork, then. Sentinel has little patience for doing paperwork himself—but he has a  _great_ appreciation for paperwork having been done. (Which is why, more often than not, he offloads his own reports to Prowl to write.) Sentinel nods in satisfaction, slightly, as Bumper trudges to his desk and sits back down.

Sentinel looks back to Broadside and concludes, “He’s sharp as a tack.”

* * *

“That Starscream…” Megatron says to Soundwave, slowly, consideringly.

He’s drilling with a few other fliers who have joined the Decepticon cause. He’s already emerging as a natural leader in this exercise—primarily because he’s the only one who  _remembers_  all the drills. At the moment, he’s giving one Flyhigh hell for banking starboard when the maneuver they were performing called for them to bank left, while a dozen other miscellaneous aircraft watch the humiliation.

Flyhigh is the recipient of Starscream’s wrath for nearly colliding with Dirge, but it’s clear that he isn’t the only flying fool out there today. These are, Megatron was informed, training exercises for newly-sparked soldiers, meant to be rotely memorized and performed, which means they’re very basic.

But also means more advanced soldiers don’t do them. Even the youngest of the fliers out there haven’t performed these particular maneuvers in hundreds of thousands of years, and they all look rusty.

All of them except Starscream.

Starscream who, for some reason, still remembers them as perfectly as though he’d practiced them yesterday; who picked these maneuvers to practice; and who now gets to berate everyone except himself for failing at maneuvers that, very literally, even a year-old Seeker can perform.

And Megatron has to wonder whether his choice of training exercise was deliberate.

Finally, Megatron finished his unfinished thought, leaning toward Soundwave. “He’s sharp as a tack, isn’t he?”

“Affirmative,” Soundwave says. “Conclusion: dangerous.”

* * *

“Anyway,” Nightbeat says, “you  _know_  I’m not an MTO. We met before the war, remember?”

Chromedome stares blankly at him. “I… what? When?”

The environment starts to shift around them; Chromedome recognizes a street in Rodion, the shadow of Sherma Bridge falling over Maccadam’s. “It was only two million years ago. Come on—Senator Sherma? Assassinated? I found the body?” Nightbeat gestures up, to where, indeed, Senator Sherma’s body is hanging from—well, it hasn’t been named Sherma’s Bridge yet, has it? Interstate Bridge, then. “I offered to help look for clues, and Prowl threatened to arrest me if I didn’t clear the police perimeter?” And there’s Prowl. Even though he’s pointing furiously at Nightbeat (Chromedome can tell he’s furious, even if Nightbeat didn’t recall his facial expression), he still somehow looks more relaxed than Chromedome’s seen him in at least a million years.

Chromedome stares at Prowl a moment, trying to remember the last time he saw Prowl look like this—like he doesn’t have the weight of the world on his shoulders yet. He can’t remember. Has Chromedome already forgotten? Or maybe Nightbeat didn’t save that data right—something about his posture that would have given away… yeah. Chromedome’s memories of what Prowl was like can’t be slipping away that fast, can they?

“Oh. Oh, yeah, I… That’s vaguely…” He turns to see himself, interviewing… what was his name, Quirk? something like that—who’s sitting on the ground, back pressed to a wall, arms crossed tight over his chest. Here Chromedome is, indeed, occasionally glancing over as Prowl argues with Nightbeat. They did meet.

“Sorry, guess I almost forgot.”

* * *

Chromedome stares at Sunder in horror. “Five and a half  _million_  years?! No, that can’t be true. I’m only three million. There’s no way my mental age is almost twice that.”

Sunder shrugs, not looking up as he carefully polishes his thumb needle. “Well, yeah–do you want to go back in?” He stretches out his hand, all five needles still displayed. “I can pull up a street scene, you can count the missing faces and blank advertisements yourself—”

“ _No_.” He puts a hand on his head, as though he can shield his brain module from the revelation that it’s aged two and a half million years faster than it’s supposed to. “No, I believe you, just… how?” His brain is nearly twice the age it’s supposed to be.

Sunder retracts his thumb, and starts on his index finger. “How often do you go under the needles yourself? Nothing corrupts the spark like doing mnemosurgery, but nothing corrupts the mind like  _receiving_  it. There's no greater cause of early onset info creep than mnemosurgery.”

Chromedome shakes his head, oblivious to the needle holes in the back of his mind that weren’t put there by Sunder. “Never. I’ve never had mnemosurgery.”

Sunder—who met Pivot before his death and who had been warned by Brainstorm never to bring him up in front of Chromedome again—gives Chromedome a dubious look. “Never?”

* * *

**Part V - Prowl**

* * *

Prowl glances up from the crowds milling below in the Orbital Command Hub’s main concourse, as what he intended to be a casual reference to an event several million years ago abruptly transforms into a mystery. “You’re  _honestly_ saying you don’t remember the time you were offended that I told the waiter to split our bills? You barely spoke to me for five days, how do you not remember?”

For the third time, Chromedome shakes his head. “Look, that's—that’s stupid, why would I be offended over that?”

“I don’t know.” Prowl finally turns to face Chromedome directly—for the first time this conversation. (It’s hard for Prowl to look at Chromedome, these days—knowing how many people he’s loved and  _deleted_ , excised from his mind like rust tumors. Three people now whose own conjunx wouldn’t grieve for them. The dead ones’ other friends were burdened with the weight of memory that he should have carried himself. He’s courting a fourth one now, Prowl hears.) “You never  _told_  me why you were offended, that’s why I’m asking!”

“Look,” Chromedome lowers his voice, “I know we ended up—” He doesn’t finish the sentence; he doesn’t need to, they both remember the yelling and accusations that preceded Prowl’s departure to Kaon. (Prowl thinks they both remember, anyway; sometimes Chromedome talks to Prowl like he has no recollection of the things Chromedome called him.) “But that was millions of years ago, and you—you don’t have to  _make up_  fights. It's—petty of you.”

Outside, Prowl doesn’t move. Inside, he reels back, wounded. Chromedome’s so determined to deny that it happened that he’d rather  _insult_  Prowl?

He really doesn’t remember the fight.

He doesn’t remember the fight, and yet is so confident in his lack of knowledge that he’d rather believe that Prowl is lying to him, about himself, out of the blue, for no reason other than to make him look bad, than believe that maybe Prowl remembers something he doesn’t.

Which means he doesn’t remember what Prowl’s like, either.

“…  _Huh_.” Prowl turns away from Chromedome—if he wants to look that uncharitably at Prowl, then Prowl has nothing else to say to him today. Instead, he looks down again at the Autobots walking below, and tries to ignore the icy fear suddenly creeping over his spark—fear of what will happen, fear of what he’ll become, once he, too, starts to forget the faces in the crowd.

* * *

“I don’t understand what the big deal is,” Fortress Maximus says, hands planted on his hips as he looks down at Prowl. “So you forgot a face.”

Prowl shakes his head without lifting it. He’s been sitting with his elbows on a desk and his face in his hands for about ten minutes now. “No, you don’t understand.” So  _dramatic_. And for what? “This is the first time I’ve ever forgotten something. Ever.”

Fort Max throws up his hands. For all this show, one would be forgiven for thinking that Prowl forgot his own name. But no. One face. “Everyone forgets their first thing eventually. And you’re, what, nearly five million? It’s amazing you’re this old without losing a face or two.”

Prowl looks up, turning to face Fort Max, agony on his face—real pain, deep pain, and suddenly Fort Max has the uncomfortable feeling that it’s for something much deeper than the natural aging process. “You don’t get it! It’s not that I’ve forgotten something, it’s that I’ve forgotten something  _now_! Right after— Right after Chromedome…”

Prowl is right; Fort Max  _doesn’t_  get it. But he’s growing aware that there’s something  _to_  get. Maybe it’s because he isn’t old enough to have forgotten his first face yet, at least not that he’s noticed; maybe he’ll feel different when he tries to recall Simanzi, tries to remember a dying face begging him for help, and can’t. Or maybe it's— Well. Fort Max doesn’t know what the mention of  _Chromedome_  means. He doesn’t know half of what Prowl went through on Cybertron after the war ended. What he does know is that whatever it was is too big and too awful for Prowl to even talk about it.

“It’s…” Prowl trips over his words again, then shakes his head viciously. “It’s not natural. It’s not info creep, it's—brain damage. I know it.”

Cerebros, hovering near the door—where he and Red Alert have been since the three of them stumbled on Prowl—finally pipes up. “For what it’s worth,” he says tentatively, “even to the experts, info creep and mnemosurgical brain damage DO look almost identical.”

Prowl slowly turns to face him, face a perfect picture of angry disbelief. “Is that supposed to help?”

“W-well, I just mean—” Cerebros shrugs, “maybe it’s natural?”

“Not helping.”

Cerebros doesn’t have anything else to offer but a hopeless shrug and a glance at Fort Max. Prowl’s face drops back into his hands.

And for a moment, no one says anything. Fort Max wishes he could offer help, but has no idea how.

Slowly, Red Alert comes out of the doorway. “The first time I forgot a face, I was two hundred fifty thousand years old. That’s how I knew.” Primus—so young.

Prowl twitches slightly, but he doesn’t say anything.

“It’s hard,” Red Alert says. “You rub around the edges of the missing face in your head, trying to bring it back, because you know it’s not natural. You know it should still be there.” He finally leans backwards against the desk, next to Prowl. "You know it means someone hurt you, and that you don’t even remember it happening. It’s terrifying—knowing that from here on out, you’re going to be literally losing your mind, byte by byte.“

Fort Max and Cerebros both wince. Cerebros pushes his hands together over his mask. Fort Max makes pointed slicing gestures across his throat with his hand— _cut it out, not helping, not helping_.

But Prowl finally speaks again. His voice rough, he asks, "How do you live with it?”

“By reminding myself that everyone else is losing their minds, too.”

Prowl starts laughing, almost inaudibly, shoulders shaking—and it takes Fort Max a moment to realize that he might actually be sobbing.

Red Alert puts a hand on Prowl’s shoulder.

* * *

**Outro - Never Forget**

* * *

Always watching his back. Always watching out for somebody who might want to stab it. Watching out for Swindle, suspected dead, and his teammates, suspecting he isn’t. Watching out for Windblade, who doesn’t have anything against him at the start but will, soon, because everyone does. Watching out for Rattrap, who’s hungry for something just a little higher than what he’s known before, and even if he’s content as second now, he won’t be forever, any more than Starscream was. Watching out for Elita One, who already holds an iron grip on one colony and who will brutalize you with the truth and then excise pieces of it as she sees fit. Always watching out, hell, even for the DJD, because you never know. You never know.

Somebody asks him,  _how do you keep track of so many enemies? Hell, how do you even remember so many enemies?_

And Starscream answers, “That’s the thing. I never forget anything.”

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on [tumblr](http://ckret2.tumblr.com/post/178548958382/the-things-we-forget).


End file.
